All She Wants Is, Ch. 6-Unfathomable-1 x 09 (Little Girl Lost)
Title: All She Wants Is-Unfathomable-1 x 09 (Little Girl Lost)
Rating: T
Summary: ""It's unfortunate. Unfair, too. Probably a bunch of un- things that she can't think of right now, because she keeps thinking about the fact that she wants to talk about it. Will and the kiss and yin-yin the panda that wasn't, and it's not the guy across the table from her she wants to talk about it with."
A/N: Tag for Little Girl Lost (1 x 09)
She wants to talk about it.
It's an awkward realization made all the more awkward by the fact that it comes in the middle of her date. Or "date." She's started thinking of it in quote marks along the way, even though the bar's nice enough and he's nice enough. There are definitely quote marks.
It's unfortunate. Unfair, too. Probably a bunch of un- things that she can't think of right now, because she keeps thinking about the fact that she wants to talk about it. Will and the kiss and yin-yin the panda that wasn't, and it's not the guy across the table from her she wants to talk about it with.
Unfortunate
Unfair
"So . . ." Her date ("date") draws out the syllable. He lifts the bottle he's been nursing. She finished hers a while back, and she's already turned down a second beer, but he swishes the last swallow around in a hopeful sort of way. "It's early yet."
Unlikely
"Not for me." The apologetic smile she gives him is real. She'd liked him on the phone. He'd liked her. But their just-the-other-side-of-cordial flirtation in the course of chasing down some evidence from one of her suspect's priors hadn't really translated across the table, and that probably doesn't have much to do with Will or a recently developed desire to talk. Probably doesn't. "Long day."
"Long day," he repeats, as if he's poking around inside it for what's true and not true. "Sure. Too bad."
"It is," she says, but she's not exactly agreeing with him. They're not exactly having the same conversation, and it's one more reason not to draw things out.
She wants to talk about it.
The notion still pushes around the inside of her skull when she and her "date" have parted ways, amicably. Unambiguously, or so she hopes, and she's wondering what to do with this. The wholly unfamiliar desire to share or vent or explain. All three at once, maybe.
She assumes it'll wait. Despite his surprisingly good behavior while the case was ongoing, she can't see him letting go of Will that easily. She can't see him letting go of the story, and she figures that he'll tease and coax and cajole it from her, bit by bit.
Or there'll be some inane reason they're stuck together somewhere-stakeout or waiting eternally on some bureaucratic process-and she'll just blurt it out. Because something about him has her . . . unbending a little. Unfolding and running afoul of her own rules about privacy. About what absolutely, non-negotiably stays inside.
Still, satisfaction is written in future tense right up till the moment that she realizes there's a convenience store clerk counting change into her hand and a six pack of beer she doesn't particularly like under one arm. She wanders out the glass doors and turns a half circle, peering up at the cross streets. She's a few streets over from his loft, and it really is early yet.
Apparently she wants to talk about it now.
He answers the door in his pajamas. Not the expected jeans and a sweatshirt or something else one degree off his usual button-down/sport coat look. Actual soft-looking, plaid pajama pants and a well-worn t-shirt.
"Beckett."
"Castle."
He blinks at her, surprised, but not at all displeased. She blinks at him, then down at her watch, totally nonplussed.
"Detective Beckett!" Alexis appears, wrapped in a pink chenille robe. Overstuffed bunny slippers peek out from under the hem of her striped pajama pants. "I thought you had a date?"
"The word 'private' has no meaning to you, does it?"
She glares at him, but he already has his hands up.
"She's a skilled interrogator."
"He never stands a chance," Alexis agrees, looking pleased with herself.
"I'm interrupting," she hears herself say. She's more than a little mortified that it hadn't occurred to her to call. To wonder if he'd even be in. But he's definitely in and he has a family and she can't believe she just showed up.
"You're not!" Alexis tugs at her sleeve, pulling Kate through the doorway. "Right, Dad?"
"Interrupting." He mutters it to himself, but he's looking at her-at the six-pack under her arm-like she might as well be a six-foot rabbit. Alexis kicks his shin, though, and he rouses himself. "No. Not interrupting at all."
"I should have called," she says to his back as he watches Alexis disappear upstairs. "You and Alexis were clearly . . ." She trails off as he turns toward her, looking glum. "I didn't mean to chase her off."
"Chase her off?" He snorts. "She'll probably send you a thank you note." He kicks at the bottom step, scowling down at the floor. "It's possible this case has left me a little too clingy for my not-so-little girl's tastes."
"Ah." The penny drops, and she feels a little sorry for him. More than a little retroactive sympathy when she thinks of some of the stories about his ex's less-than-stellar parenting in the new and unwelcome light of Theresa and Alfred Candela.
"And you?" He wanders to the kitchen counter where he'd set down the beer after Alexis insisted he take her coat. He holds a bottle up to the light, frowning a little at the label.
"Me?" She stands at the foot of the stairs, wondering if he means her to follow. Wondering how a spur-of-the-moment thing like this actually works.
"Case hangover sabotage your . . . date?" The hesitation is slight, the smile underneath just enough to hint at quote marks.
"I had a date, Castle." She crosses the room and snatches the bottle from his hand.
"And yet . . ." he replies evenly as he moves around to the other side of the counter. He roots around in a drawer, coming up with a churchkey. He grabs another bottle and pops the top. "Here you are."
He holds both out to her-the open bottle and the churchkey itself. It's an odd little concession. A cautious message. Her choice, and just as oddly, it disarms her. Settles her on some point she hadn't really realized was in question: Stay or go.
She swaps her bottle for the open one. She waits for him to pop the second cap, then clinks the neck of his. "Here I am."
They're stuck on shop talk for a while. What will happen with Angela and why. How things will move through the court system and how much FBI involvement there'll be.
"It's like the world's worst riddle," he says, grimmer than he'd usually be. "When is a kidnapping not a kidnapping?"
It's not uncomfortable. Beer in his kitchen. Offloading some of the lingering baggage from the case. It's not unpleasant, but it's unsatisfying. Weirdly unnerving the way he's content to follow her lead. the way he's not pushing. About Will or about anything.
But they move from the kitchen to his office at some point. He holds up the four beers still in the carrier. She shrugs a why not? and that's it as far as any kind of discussion goes.
"The Batcave after dark," he jokes, indicating the blankets and pillows piled at the foot of the two oversized leather chairs drawn around for a better angle on the flat screen with a scatter of DVD cases out on the shelf beneath.
"Not quite what I pictured." She drops into the chair closest to the door, fighting the urge to scoot it back a little when he sits and she realizes their knees are practically brushing.
"So you've pictured it."
He gives her an over-the-top leer, but something shifts for her. Something about the light or the warmth of the space. Or maybe just the fact that for once he isn't pushing, and she was kind of counting on him for that. Whatever it is, something shifts.
"He kissed me." She worries the edge of the label on her beer with a thumbnail, passing the time in the eternity before he says anything.
"Ok . . ." He draws the word out. Starts and stops in the process of saying something else, then goes for it. "But when I showed up. You weren't . . . not kissing him." He scrunches his eyes shut, as though he expects to be on the receiving end of violence.
It makes her laugh, though. The ridiculous face he's making. The fact that he's right. "I wasn't not kissing him."
"How did you two . . ." He pulls up short, rethinking the questions as he goes. "I know how you met, but how did you ever . . ." He sets his beer aside and places one hand on each arm of the chair, palms facing each other. He looks from one to the other like the distance between them is infinite.
"Is it that hard to picture?" It comes out a little sharp. A little defensive, but really she's just surprised.
Castle nods, cautious but in earnest. "It kind of is."
"You're the writer." She shifts in her chair, twisting sideways to face him. Settling in. It's strange, looking from the outside in like this, but interesting, too, like he's got the answer to some nagging question she hasn't even asked herself yet. "How would it happen if you were writing it?"
"Well . . ." He glances at her, satisfying himself that she's really asking. "I get the set up." He glances past her, out the door and as far up the stairs as he can see. "Going through something that . . . intense. Something only one other person in the world really gets." His voice is quiet. Matter of fact. "It's profound. I can see it in the moment."
"The moment," she echoes. She feels hollow and strangely distant from her own body.
He registers the odd quality of her voice. She feels it. Another shift in the energy between them. In the blur of her peripheral vision, she sees his hand advance and retreat. She sees him pulled in two directions, and isn't sure herself which way she wants the moment to go.
"Besides, he's a crier, isn't he?" He's so deadly serious as he says it that tears a laugh from her. A wet, ugly snort that eggs him on. "And we're not talking a single manly tear rolling down the rugged planes of his creepily chiseled face. Full on ugly cry. I can see that turning into a pity fu-"
"Castle!" She scoops a pillow from the floor and fires it at him.
He catches it and hides his face, peering around the side to see if she's really mad. If he pulled the wrong way, and she doesn't really know any more than he does until more of the story slips our in fits and starts.
"We didn't plan it. Neither of us was looking when-" She breaks off, not really wanting to concede that he's more or less on the money about how it started.
"When." He gives her a nod, moving past it. Listening and following her lead.
"But once we were together, it seemed logical." She winces at the word, but there's really no other. "A good fit, everyone said."
"Well if everyone said." He spreads his hands, kidding, but it's a little sour. A little surprised, and it bugs her.
"I'm just saying" - she gestures toward him with her beer - "you're the only one who's ever said they can't see it."
She falls silent. He doesn't jump in, and maybe this is the end of it. His offer to listen. Her desire to talk. She feels clearer. More centered, even with another beer and a half gone, and maybe that's enough. She's just thinking it could be when he breaks the silence.
"He's too sure of you," he says quickly. Quietly. "Like he can just walk in whenever and . . ." He snaps his fingers. "I just can't see anyone being that . . . complacent about you."
"Complacent."
The word rings out like a chime all through her. She remembers the end in more detail than she's allowed herself in years. The fancy meal and the way he held her hand across the table. Everything presented as a fait accompli, with all the upsides to Philadelphia for her as an afterthought. Smaller department. More room for rapid advancement. And no rabbit holes to go chasing down. She remembers his pitch, point by point, and it aches a little, but it's no worse than that.
"He always was," she admits. She tips back another swallow of her beer, but it's warm and she doesn't much like it anyway.
It's a good ending.
She remembers him saying that, right here, and it feels like cue. She closes her hands around the necks of her beers and his, pushing to her feet as she does. He doesn't protest. He rises, too. He snags the cardboard with its two orphans and follows her from the office back to the kitchen.
"Where should I . . ." She raises the cluster of bottles.
"Just there." He indicates the counter and holds up the unopened leftovers. She makes a face and shakes her head. "We could pour out a 24 on the curb. Where did you two break up?"
She laughs and doesn't answer, and then they're in the foyer. Then he's helping her on with her coat, and she doesn't feel like wrangling over that, so she lets him. He holds the door open for her, and she half wants to leave things like that. A laugh and a high note and some kind of satisfaction. She half wants to, but she turns back to say good night and he's waiting. Leaning on the jamb and holding the door open wide, like she's welcome to change her mind.
"He still is, you know." His voice is quiet, but there's an edge to it. A question, and he holds her gaze when she looks up. "Complacent."
"You were eavesdropping," she says, but there's not much heat behind it.
"Eavesdropping?" He draws his face into an exaggerated blank. " 'Think about it'," he mimics, making his voice absurdly deep. He holds up a hand, heading her off. "He's got that whole barrel-chested thing going on. If I was eavesdropping, the whole bullpen was eavesdropping."
She rolls her eyes, conceding the point. It's another breakpoint. Another possible ending, but her feet are planted, and his seem to be, too.
"I know he is." She's surprised to find an edge to the words. Surprised to find the clean lines of anger buried beneath the mess of everything else. "And I didn't say anything, so he'll think 'That's not a no'."
"And it's not not a no?"
It's a little swift. A little eager, and they're drifting into dangerous waters here. Or they could be, and she's usually more cautious than this. But tonight, she wants to talk.
"It's not not a no," she says, the truth unfurling inside her like something warm and comfortable, but a little heavy, too. Possibility dying an airless death, and it can't help but weigh her down for a while. "He'll think what he wants to think, no matter what I say. I'm not . . . burning any more energy on that."
"Oh you do, don't you?" His face breaks into a grin so wide it makes her blink.
"Do what?" She holds up a hand, cutting off her own question. "Never mind. Never mind, Castle." She turns to hide her own grin. She heads for the elevator and doesn't turn back.
"Definitely a little more Nikki Heat than I thought," he calls after her.
She grins to herself and doesn't turn back.
A/N: Thanks for reading.
Rating: T
Summary: ""It's unfortunate. Unfair, too. Probably a bunch of un- things that she can't think of right now, because she keeps thinking about the fact that she wants to talk about it. Will and the kiss and yin-yin the panda that wasn't, and it's not the guy across the table from her she wants to talk about it with."
A/N: Tag for Little Girl Lost (1 x 09)
She wants to talk about it.
It's an awkward realization made all the more awkward by the fact that it comes in the middle of her date. Or "date." She's started thinking of it in quote marks along the way, even though the bar's nice enough and he's nice enough. There are definitely quote marks.
It's unfortunate. Unfair, too. Probably a bunch of un- things that she can't think of right now, because she keeps thinking about the fact that she wants to talk about it. Will and the kiss and yin-yin the panda that wasn't, and it's not the guy across the table from her she wants to talk about it with.
Unfortunate
Unfair
"So . . ." Her date ("date") draws out the syllable. He lifts the bottle he's been nursing. She finished hers a while back, and she's already turned down a second beer, but he swishes the last swallow around in a hopeful sort of way. "It's early yet."
Unlikely
"Not for me." The apologetic smile she gives him is real. She'd liked him on the phone. He'd liked her. But their just-the-other-side-of-cordial flirtation in the course of chasing down some evidence from one of her suspect's priors hadn't really translated across the table, and that probably doesn't have much to do with Will or a recently developed desire to talk. Probably doesn't. "Long day."
"Long day," he repeats, as if he's poking around inside it for what's true and not true. "Sure. Too bad."
"It is," she says, but she's not exactly agreeing with him. They're not exactly having the same conversation, and it's one more reason not to draw things out.
She wants to talk about it.
The notion still pushes around the inside of her skull when she and her "date" have parted ways, amicably. Unambiguously, or so she hopes, and she's wondering what to do with this. The wholly unfamiliar desire to share or vent or explain. All three at once, maybe.
She assumes it'll wait. Despite his surprisingly good behavior while the case was ongoing, she can't see him letting go of Will that easily. She can't see him letting go of the story, and she figures that he'll tease and coax and cajole it from her, bit by bit.
Or there'll be some inane reason they're stuck together somewhere-stakeout or waiting eternally on some bureaucratic process-and she'll just blurt it out. Because something about him has her . . . unbending a little. Unfolding and running afoul of her own rules about privacy. About what absolutely, non-negotiably stays inside.
Still, satisfaction is written in future tense right up till the moment that she realizes there's a convenience store clerk counting change into her hand and a six pack of beer she doesn't particularly like under one arm. She wanders out the glass doors and turns a half circle, peering up at the cross streets. She's a few streets over from his loft, and it really is early yet.
Apparently she wants to talk about it now.
He answers the door in his pajamas. Not the expected jeans and a sweatshirt or something else one degree off his usual button-down/sport coat look. Actual soft-looking, plaid pajama pants and a well-worn t-shirt.
"Beckett."
"Castle."
He blinks at her, surprised, but not at all displeased. She blinks at him, then down at her watch, totally nonplussed.
"Detective Beckett!" Alexis appears, wrapped in a pink chenille robe. Overstuffed bunny slippers peek out from under the hem of her striped pajama pants. "I thought you had a date?"
"The word 'private' has no meaning to you, does it?"
She glares at him, but he already has his hands up.
"She's a skilled interrogator."
"He never stands a chance," Alexis agrees, looking pleased with herself.
"I'm interrupting," she hears herself say. She's more than a little mortified that it hadn't occurred to her to call. To wonder if he'd even be in. But he's definitely in and he has a family and she can't believe she just showed up.
"You're not!" Alexis tugs at her sleeve, pulling Kate through the doorway. "Right, Dad?"
"Interrupting." He mutters it to himself, but he's looking at her-at the six-pack under her arm-like she might as well be a six-foot rabbit. Alexis kicks his shin, though, and he rouses himself. "No. Not interrupting at all."
"I should have called," she says to his back as he watches Alexis disappear upstairs. "You and Alexis were clearly . . ." She trails off as he turns toward her, looking glum. "I didn't mean to chase her off."
"Chase her off?" He snorts. "She'll probably send you a thank you note." He kicks at the bottom step, scowling down at the floor. "It's possible this case has left me a little too clingy for my not-so-little girl's tastes."
"Ah." The penny drops, and she feels a little sorry for him. More than a little retroactive sympathy when she thinks of some of the stories about his ex's less-than-stellar parenting in the new and unwelcome light of Theresa and Alfred Candela.
"And you?" He wanders to the kitchen counter where he'd set down the beer after Alexis insisted he take her coat. He holds a bottle up to the light, frowning a little at the label.
"Me?" She stands at the foot of the stairs, wondering if he means her to follow. Wondering how a spur-of-the-moment thing like this actually works.
"Case hangover sabotage your . . . date?" The hesitation is slight, the smile underneath just enough to hint at quote marks.
"I had a date, Castle." She crosses the room and snatches the bottle from his hand.
"And yet . . ." he replies evenly as he moves around to the other side of the counter. He roots around in a drawer, coming up with a churchkey. He grabs another bottle and pops the top. "Here you are."
He holds both out to her-the open bottle and the churchkey itself. It's an odd little concession. A cautious message. Her choice, and just as oddly, it disarms her. Settles her on some point she hadn't really realized was in question: Stay or go.
She swaps her bottle for the open one. She waits for him to pop the second cap, then clinks the neck of his. "Here I am."
They're stuck on shop talk for a while. What will happen with Angela and why. How things will move through the court system and how much FBI involvement there'll be.
"It's like the world's worst riddle," he says, grimmer than he'd usually be. "When is a kidnapping not a kidnapping?"
It's not uncomfortable. Beer in his kitchen. Offloading some of the lingering baggage from the case. It's not unpleasant, but it's unsatisfying. Weirdly unnerving the way he's content to follow her lead. the way he's not pushing. About Will or about anything.
But they move from the kitchen to his office at some point. He holds up the four beers still in the carrier. She shrugs a why not? and that's it as far as any kind of discussion goes.
"The Batcave after dark," he jokes, indicating the blankets and pillows piled at the foot of the two oversized leather chairs drawn around for a better angle on the flat screen with a scatter of DVD cases out on the shelf beneath.
"Not quite what I pictured." She drops into the chair closest to the door, fighting the urge to scoot it back a little when he sits and she realizes their knees are practically brushing.
"So you've pictured it."
He gives her an over-the-top leer, but something shifts for her. Something about the light or the warmth of the space. Or maybe just the fact that for once he isn't pushing, and she was kind of counting on him for that. Whatever it is, something shifts.
"He kissed me." She worries the edge of the label on her beer with a thumbnail, passing the time in the eternity before he says anything.
"Ok . . ." He draws the word out. Starts and stops in the process of saying something else, then goes for it. "But when I showed up. You weren't . . . not kissing him." He scrunches his eyes shut, as though he expects to be on the receiving end of violence.
It makes her laugh, though. The ridiculous face he's making. The fact that he's right. "I wasn't not kissing him."
"How did you two . . ." He pulls up short, rethinking the questions as he goes. "I know how you met, but how did you ever . . ." He sets his beer aside and places one hand on each arm of the chair, palms facing each other. He looks from one to the other like the distance between them is infinite.
"Is it that hard to picture?" It comes out a little sharp. A little defensive, but really she's just surprised.
Castle nods, cautious but in earnest. "It kind of is."
"You're the writer." She shifts in her chair, twisting sideways to face him. Settling in. It's strange, looking from the outside in like this, but interesting, too, like he's got the answer to some nagging question she hasn't even asked herself yet. "How would it happen if you were writing it?"
"Well . . ." He glances at her, satisfying himself that she's really asking. "I get the set up." He glances past her, out the door and as far up the stairs as he can see. "Going through something that . . . intense. Something only one other person in the world really gets." His voice is quiet. Matter of fact. "It's profound. I can see it in the moment."
"The moment," she echoes. She feels hollow and strangely distant from her own body.
He registers the odd quality of her voice. She feels it. Another shift in the energy between them. In the blur of her peripheral vision, she sees his hand advance and retreat. She sees him pulled in two directions, and isn't sure herself which way she wants the moment to go.
"Besides, he's a crier, isn't he?" He's so deadly serious as he says it that tears a laugh from her. A wet, ugly snort that eggs him on. "And we're not talking a single manly tear rolling down the rugged planes of his creepily chiseled face. Full on ugly cry. I can see that turning into a pity fu-"
"Castle!" She scoops a pillow from the floor and fires it at him.
He catches it and hides his face, peering around the side to see if she's really mad. If he pulled the wrong way, and she doesn't really know any more than he does until more of the story slips our in fits and starts.
"We didn't plan it. Neither of us was looking when-" She breaks off, not really wanting to concede that he's more or less on the money about how it started.
"When." He gives her a nod, moving past it. Listening and following her lead.
"But once we were together, it seemed logical." She winces at the word, but there's really no other. "A good fit, everyone said."
"Well if everyone said." He spreads his hands, kidding, but it's a little sour. A little surprised, and it bugs her.
"I'm just saying" - she gestures toward him with her beer - "you're the only one who's ever said they can't see it."
She falls silent. He doesn't jump in, and maybe this is the end of it. His offer to listen. Her desire to talk. She feels clearer. More centered, even with another beer and a half gone, and maybe that's enough. She's just thinking it could be when he breaks the silence.
"He's too sure of you," he says quickly. Quietly. "Like he can just walk in whenever and . . ." He snaps his fingers. "I just can't see anyone being that . . . complacent about you."
"Complacent."
The word rings out like a chime all through her. She remembers the end in more detail than she's allowed herself in years. The fancy meal and the way he held her hand across the table. Everything presented as a fait accompli, with all the upsides to Philadelphia for her as an afterthought. Smaller department. More room for rapid advancement. And no rabbit holes to go chasing down. She remembers his pitch, point by point, and it aches a little, but it's no worse than that.
"He always was," she admits. She tips back another swallow of her beer, but it's warm and she doesn't much like it anyway.
It's a good ending.
She remembers him saying that, right here, and it feels like cue. She closes her hands around the necks of her beers and his, pushing to her feet as she does. He doesn't protest. He rises, too. He snags the cardboard with its two orphans and follows her from the office back to the kitchen.
"Where should I . . ." She raises the cluster of bottles.
"Just there." He indicates the counter and holds up the unopened leftovers. She makes a face and shakes her head. "We could pour out a 24 on the curb. Where did you two break up?"
She laughs and doesn't answer, and then they're in the foyer. Then he's helping her on with her coat, and she doesn't feel like wrangling over that, so she lets him. He holds the door open for her, and she half wants to leave things like that. A laugh and a high note and some kind of satisfaction. She half wants to, but she turns back to say good night and he's waiting. Leaning on the jamb and holding the door open wide, like she's welcome to change her mind.
"He still is, you know." His voice is quiet, but there's an edge to it. A question, and he holds her gaze when she looks up. "Complacent."
"You were eavesdropping," she says, but there's not much heat behind it.
"Eavesdropping?" He draws his face into an exaggerated blank. " 'Think about it'," he mimics, making his voice absurdly deep. He holds up a hand, heading her off. "He's got that whole barrel-chested thing going on. If I was eavesdropping, the whole bullpen was eavesdropping."
She rolls her eyes, conceding the point. It's another breakpoint. Another possible ending, but her feet are planted, and his seem to be, too.
"I know he is." She's surprised to find an edge to the words. Surprised to find the clean lines of anger buried beneath the mess of everything else. "And I didn't say anything, so he'll think 'That's not a no'."
"And it's not not a no?"
It's a little swift. A little eager, and they're drifting into dangerous waters here. Or they could be, and she's usually more cautious than this. But tonight, she wants to talk.
"It's not not a no," she says, the truth unfurling inside her like something warm and comfortable, but a little heavy, too. Possibility dying an airless death, and it can't help but weigh her down for a while. "He'll think what he wants to think, no matter what I say. I'm not . . . burning any more energy on that."
"Oh you do, don't you?" His face breaks into a grin so wide it makes her blink.
"Do what?" She holds up a hand, cutting off her own question. "Never mind. Never mind, Castle." She turns to hide her own grin. She heads for the elevator and doesn't turn back.
"Definitely a little more Nikki Heat than I thought," he calls after her.
She grins to herself and doesn't turn back.
A/N: Thanks for reading.